The south buttress is
complete up to two weatherings, and has two strings round it. It
is a picturesque and valuable ruin, and well worth a visit. It is
amusing to notice that Creswell now calls itself a rectory, and an
open-air service is held annually within its walls. It was a
pre-bend of S. Mary's, Stafford, and previously a Free Chapel, the
advowson belonging to the Lord of the Manor; and it was sometimes
supplied with preachers from Ranton Priory. Of the story of its
destruction I can discover nothing. It is now carefully preserved
and, I have heard it suggested that it might some day be rebuilt
to meet the spiritual needs of its neighbourhood.
"We pass now to the most stately and beautiful object in this
neighbourhood. I mean the tower of Ranton Priory Church. It is
always known here as Ranton Abbey. But it has no right to the
title. It was an off-shoot of Haughmond Abbey, near Shrewsbury,
and was a Priory of Black Canons, founded _temp._ Henry II. The
church has disappeared entirely, with the exception of a bit of
the south-west walling of the nave and a Norman doorway in it.
This may have connected the church with the domestic buildings. In
Cough's Collection in the Bodleian, dated 1731, there is a sketch
of the church.
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